The Political Uses of the Past During the Cold War: Conservative Intellectuals and the Military Dictatorship in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine how, in the context of the Cold War and Latin America’s National Security dictatorships, conservative Brazilian intellectuals turned to history to demonstrate the country’s ‘incompatibility’ with progressive values and left-wing government. It analyzes a selection of lectures given by acclaimed conservative intellectuals at the National War College during the 1960s and 70s. An examination of these lectures demonstrates that many of the elements chosen to define ‘national identity’ under the ‘Estado Novo’ [...]